Should You Write the PTCAS COVID Essay?

For the past three cycles, PTCAS has had an optional 2500-character COVID essay:

If you feel as though your pathway to a physical therapist education program was educationally, personally, or professionally impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic, please describe for your programs the impact you experienced. Some impacts you may want to consider when responding include:

• Educational: Did your institution move to requiring online or distance coursework? Were you able to effectively interact with your program faculty and professional staff and receive the support needed to succeed? Were you required to move to a Pass/Fail grading system? Did your GRE testing date get canceled or delayed?
• Personal: Did you unexpectedly have to change your living situation? Did you need to care for yourself or a loved one who was directly impacted? Did you seek out new volunteer opportunities that arose from the crisis
• Professional: Did you have a change in employment status, a change in available shadowing experiences, or other professional or financial changes?

At this point, over two years after the pandemic began, everyone has been impacted in some way. I don’t suggest writing the essay unless something unique or significant happened to you because of COVID.

Your classes went online at some point, and it was probably harder to get shadowing hours. These things happened to everyone, so to write about this, you’d need a reason. If your grades suffered at one point or you didn’t shadow in more than one setting, you may want to use the essay t explain. Otherwise, I can’t see the point in wasting an admissions committee member’s time reading about this.

If you were impacted in a significant or unique way, by all means explain. I’ve edited essays by people who lost loved ones, had to be hospitalized, or experienced significant financial impacts due to COVID. Events such as these should definitely be explained.

Also, this is an essay where you don’t have to hit all the characters. Unlike the main personal statement, in which you want to come close to the character limit, if you were only impacted in one major way, you may not need all 2500 characters to answer the prompt. That is ok.

No matter what you write about for this essay, end on a positive note. Explain how you tried to overcome the hardships you endured. Maybe you sought out extra tutoring or retook a class. Perhaps you found a creative way to get observation hours. Rather than just complaining about COVID, show how you triumphed over any setbacks you faced.

At the end of the day, this essay, like most others, should be used to prove that you’ll be a resilient and competent PT student and future physical therapist one day.